Closet Olympic Scrapping

Okay, I’m going to make an admittance in public - I’m watching the Olympic Games. Shocking, yes - but it’s free entertainment in this day and age. The U.K. coverage concentrates on British medal chances, so I’m a little berift in seeing much kiwi action going on, but I’m enjoying the sports never-the-less (especially when either a British or Kiwi sportsperson wins over the Aussies, lol).

Now, I’ve got to admit, we missed the four hours of the opening ceremony - it came on at 1:00pm over here, live. And as a family we were on holiday, and had some actual sporting activities booked to get to. My own family’s activities these last couple of weeks have involved swimming, cycling, tennis (admittedly with a spongey ball on an indoor court), horseback riding (okay, it was a miniature pony) and the 1000 metre dash through a lightning storm in a forest back to our cabin.

Some of those, I might be documenting in my scrapbook layouts in the near future. But I’ve got to question what we, as scrappers are doing regarding documenting our actual Olympics 2008 viewing? Afterall, I - and certainly my hubbie - must have put in quite a few hours of tellie watching over the past week or so. It’s taken up a chunk of our lives, watching all that sport and medal presentations.

But will I personally do a layout showing my future generations that we spent hours sitting in front of a television, willing our national teams onto more gold - well, no, not really. I don’t know why - but it just seems, well, kind of a sedentary past time which I don’t want to admit to through a scrapbook layout and some photographs in twenty years time. So, perhaps there are some topics best not scrapped, then?

On the other hand, I’m surprised by how few digital designers out there have grabbed hold of the opportunities in the Olympics. Where are all the sporting kits? And I’ve only noticed one “Olympic sized Sale” out there also. Maybe for the closing ceremony, then?

Finally, I’m going to turn this one around on my own self now and generate some push. You see, with over 300 decent photographs from our own holidays, I’m about to venture into an Olympic Sized Scrapping event all of my own.

20 Free eBooks about social media

This list was originally compiled by Chris Brogan who has allowed it to be reposted across blogs (like this one!)The first link is to a PDF file, the second link is to the site where it’s hosted. Links were working as at August 7th, 2008.

 

20 Free eBooks About Social Media

1. The New Rules of Viral Marketing - David Meerman Scott
2. Marketing Apple - MarketingApple.com
3. Masters of Marketing - Startup Internet Marketing
4. Podcast Marketing eBook - Christopher S. Penn
5. Google Adwords Secrets - SEOBook
6. Get Viral Get Visitors - Stacie Mahoe
7. Marketing With Case Studies - Dynamic Copywriting
8. How to Write a Marketing Plan - Geisheker Group
9. SEO for WordPress blogs - Blizzard Internet
10. Social Web Analytics - Social Web Analytics
11. Geeks Guide to Promoting Yourself With Twitter - Geekpreneur
12. The Zen of Blogging - Hunter Nutall
13. What is Social Media - iCrossing
14. A Primer in Social Media - SmashLab
15. Effective Internet Presence - Effective Internet Presence
16. Introduction to Good Usability - Peter Pixel
17. Increasing the Response to Your Email Marketing Program - CRM Transformation
18. We Have a Website. Now What? - Craig Rentmeester
19. Blogs & Social Media - PRSA
20. The Podcast Customer Revealed - Edison Media Research

30DC Update (WP Related)

Well, it's Sunday evening here in the UK, and I have a Wordpress custom setup again! It took the folks at Wordpress Direct five days to do it, but I had an email in my inbox this morning telling me the Support ticket was closed, and my site was back up with no problems. Looking on the ticket itself, it was signed off by Marty - he's the guy who's doing all the PR forum stuff on the 30 Day Challenge forums.

I went with held breath (literally) to my website, to find that it was there, just a blank wordpress starter. I had a bit of mucking around to do, putting on a chosen theme, and inputting keyword categories, and I've spent the last full day getting the blog up and running again. But it's there, and I am inheriently thankful for the service from Wordpress Direct.

I would probably pay for the monthly service but can't work out onsite how you now upgrade for that - I'll eventually do that. I'm sure I've run out of install grace however, but still would like to have a look at setting up another blog on a different niche topic.

Whether I've chosen a do-able niche is another matter - delving into my current one there's so much associated with internet marketing, different acronyms spinning all over the place towards niches, content, PLRs, reseller rights and the like. It's a pure headache to even work this all out for this newbie. But at least I have the blog up and running now.

I still want to be able to put in a workable resource directory page, however - which is how I got into trouble five days ago, with a plugin which corrupted the entire thing all the way through to my parent pages. I am going to see if the techie guy I found will be able to do that, and setup a new site for me in a short time or not. He seems very nice, but very busy, but I also have the Blog Mastermind exercises to catchup on, and as a priority given that I pay for those.

I've been, on a personal level, extremely sick the last few days, and totally out of the world. My brain is foggy from pain and pain medication, and my whole world feels surreal and distant. The one or two true things which have found me more in this world are remarkably associated with taking photos at a local zoo, and loading 300+ holiday photos onto the computer with thoughts on which layouts I may like to create. My hubbie goes back to work tomorrow, leaving me with our daughter (and visiting school friends) to occupy with activities. Perhaps that return to some normalcy will help me to focus more on just getting the minimal done on the 30DC site, and the Blog Mastermind exercises, and moving onto something more enjoyable for me.

PS. Seth Godin suggests this is a Cat Blog here - a blog about me, and my personal trials and tribulations. His latest free ebook called Who's There suggests there are three types of blogs - Cat blogs, Boss blogs and the Viral or business blogs internet marketers are producing. I'm not sure what a scrapbooking / personal blog might be. Are you?

But in that eBook, Seth also suggests the best blogs start conversations, but don't control them.  And he goes on to list what the best blogs do.

Well, on my new blog for the 30DC I've never intended selling things, just giving good content if possible. Because I enjoy researching and writing, and blogging. So maybe Seth has a point (erm, when has he not, come to think of it?) and perhaps I'm going to fail miserably on the 30DC, but I'm proud to say that I'm going to attempt with all of my power to increase the value of the content on any of the blogs I do maintain - including this one. Even if it might be a cat blog?

This Blog

For those who have asked or are wondering (and are sitting around patiently cursing my whole 30 Day Challenge / Blog Mastermind posts and the whole Wordpress problems at the moment) -

It has never been my intention to close down the Scrapability blog here on Squarespace for the 30 Day Challenge thing. That challenge and Blog Mastermind require a Wordpress blog to be setup. I’ve chosen unassociated topics for those challenges, away from the main drive of this blog sitting here. The 30 Day Challenge starts from fresh - choosing topics and setting up SEO and hopefully monetisation on it. For that, I have had to purchase some new domains and deal with new blogging systems.

But Scrapability on Squarespace will continue as my personal blog (hence the posts on all my troubles at the moment, which are of a personal nature) and with the topics of both scrapbooking (in my life and externally) and writing, as my passion.

I have considered taking off the writing topic to a separate blog, but if so, that will be way in the future once I get this whole Wordpress and 30DC sorted, and if I work out what I’m doing there. Once out of the shadow of these particular challenges, I was hoping to be able to spend more time here, and bring up a more powerful speil on the scrapbooking (particularly digital scrapbooking) topic itself, even pulling over the links back here.

So, that’s where this blog and it’s readership is at. Please bear with me as I do get this sorted one way or another, and then can focus back on the content which sits close to my soul and passion here at Scrapability. Nothing sits still forever on the wiggly wide web, but this blog isn’t going anywhere.

In the meantime, I have possibly 300 digital photographs to upload to the computer, and nearly as many layouts to create. And I’ve got to catchup with what is going on with the digital scrapping world.

3 Hours and a Perspective on Time

 I’ve been “on hold” (ticket says in progress) with Wordpress Direct for three hours now. All morning I sat here with them, dealing through the support ticket and website. Then silence from 11:30 am my time. Eventually I gave myself permission to actually walk away from the computer and have lunch. Then further permission to go pick up my daughter from a friend’s house. Then further permission to go play with my dog.

I’d spent hours last night on the same support ticket, trying to sort out the problem with installing via Wordpress Direct my wordpress website for the 30 Day Challenge. We’ve been around the mill together, them and I, into cpanel, resetting passwords, resetting install allowances. So far, it hasn’t worked. And without a continuation of the conversation, I can’t see it working.

I blogged about all my problems last night but didn’t publish the blog. Simply putting it down on paper helped. Who would ever know what a challenge this might turn out to be? The folks at Wordpress Direct have been very kind and have made some promises towards sorting it, but that was now 4 hours ago, and I’m sitting here not sorted at all. From going to hope and back again to disillusionment.

Still, it gives me a brand new perspective on the value of time and effort. On Monday we travelled home from our family holiday. The journey should have taken 55 minutes at the most. We were only 20 miles away when our car broke down - bigtime. It happened in the middle of the fast lane, and I must praise our husband for getting us out of there, and onto a side road and rutted parking bay before we were ploughed into by a lorry or something.

We then spent four hours awaiting the arrival of first one RAC man, then a flatbed tow truck. As we were driving a big 4x4 loaded up with holiday stuff and two bikes, it was a mission to get home. Eventually we arrived home on the tow truck five hours after we should have been. I then raced to start off in catching up on the 30 Day Challenge and purchased a domain on hostgator and used the Wordpress Direct service to install. Despite some major headaches with setup, eventually everything worked and worked well.

Until yesterday when my own errors made it all go wrong, but those have been corrected and now we are show-stopped by something to do with the install process or some setting at my host. I don’t know? I wish I did know.

I’ve spent hours doing that website, and even more hours trying to correct it. Hours with Wordpress Direct trying to install. Hours with them on the support ticket. Now hours of silence from them (perhaps they move over from India to the US - heck, I don’t know?!).

But, of all of these various waiting hours, which feel at the time such a waste of my own and family time with nothing to show from it, I have developed an interesting perspective (and fuzzy headedness) about life.

You see, my husband is home on his final days of holidays too. And whereas I feel utterly guilty about the late nights and full days sat in front of this PC, hoping that helpdesks will “sort me out” as promised, and wasting our precious family holiday time together - well, all he admits to wanting to do is sit around, watch the Olympics and relax before he has to go back for 49 more weeks of work before he gets to relax again.

(Whether he considers the hours sitting on a dusty sidebay in a broken-down car - without a toilet - as “relaxing” is another matter).

He has a point though. Life is a bit tough at the moment. For many of us, yes. The credit crunch is really being felt. And I have no money for this whole 30DC / Wordpress business. For us, this week, things haven’t been going well at all (and I hardly count the pain that is my Wordpress problems). The car which broke down is terminal - it will cost more to fix than we would get in selling it. Our other car is similarly old and is too costly to fix should it suffer something drastic - and it will - it’s currently reeking of petrol. But purchasing a new family car right now would take all our life savings.

Financial problems aside at the moment, there’s also the news that my father-in-law went into hospital last night with a suspected heart problem. On the seemingly good news front, we’ve finally heard back regarding our adoption assessment (after 6 months of near silence and waiting) and we look like heading towards a September review panel. But anyone who  understands the intensity of that adoption process will understand when I suggest that bringing that back into our lives now has only caused more stress and tension as we go through that process again over the last few days. Our family seems to be in the wars this week.

But if there’s anything I know about, it’s the value of relaxing time. And the value of a patient support person trying to sort things out. I hope they come back to me, though. I’m kind of sick of waiting, lol. And the hope that sits at the end of any tunnel of waiting.